April 2, 2019 — Nearly 400,000 fall Chinook salmon died due to a mistake at the Coleman National Fish Hatchery in Anderson, California, U.S.A., last week, according to a source at the hatchery.
Water to one of the raceways was accidentally turned off overnight and the mistake was not discovered until the morning. The salmon were less than half-a-year old and died due to a lack of oxygen, according to hatchery project leader Brett Galyean, speaking to KRCR News.
March 28, 2019 — Under the heading of “marine survival” in his slideshow, Phil Richards put a photo of the Grim Reaper walking along a beach and looking out over the ocean.
Richards, the Southeast chinook salmon stock assessment supervisor for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, was presenting to a crowd of about 80 people at a Territorial Sportsmen King Salmon Symposium on Wednesday night. The image of the Grim Reaper looking out over the ocean was reminiscent of what Richards had said at the beginning of his presentation about what to expect from chinook salmon returns.
“For the next one to two years, it looks pretty grim,” Richards said.
Projections for chinook (king) salmon returns in the next couple years continue to be low — the Department of Fish and Game’s forecast for this season is the second-lowest since 1995, but is slightly better than last year’s forecast. Richards said the main problem is that when salmon head out into the ocean, fewer and fewer of them are coming back. This low marine survival rate is baffling and frustrating fish experts.
March 11, 2019 — Ocean conditions are improving for salmon entering the ocean this year, several years after The Blob, an unusually warm water event that began forming in 2014, scientists announced Friday.
Research surveys in 2018 confirmed tiny animals that stoke the food chain were nice and fatty. Anchovies, an important forage fish, were increasing in number. Sea lion pups were numerous and growing well, and fish-eating sea birds going strong.
However, subsurface sea temperatures were still warmer than average in some areas. Pyrosomes, a warm-water animal that is not supposed to be in Northwest waters, were still numerous.
Forecasts for chinook salmon in 2019 also were for below-average salmon returns to the Columbia River. Extensive ocean acidification and poorly oxygenated waters off both Washington and Oregon also were predicted for this year.
Read the full story from The Seattle Times at The Spokesman-Review
March 4, 2019 — After three difficult years when Chinook salmon population numbers were down and fishing opportunities were limited, commercial fishermen are hoping that the upcoming season will be better.
“What we’re seeing is a better forecast of salmon in the ocean this year than we saw last year,” said Harry Morse, public information officer for the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, following a meeting with about 85 commercial and recreational anglers on Wednesday in Santa Rosa. “We’re cautiously optimistic.”
Commercial anglers who traditionally rely on salmon fishing for their livelihood have contended with three curtailed seasons in a row, a ripple effect of the drought that lasted from 2013 to 2016. Diners and restaurants have also experienced the aftereffects in terms of high prices and scarce supplies of salmon, turning what was once a spring and summer staple into a luxury item.
What’s different for the coming season, which is scheduled to start in May, is that there is a much larger estimated number of salmon in the ocean, meaning that catch limits will likely be somewhat looser when they are announced in April.
“It’s been a tough couple years for commercial fishermen,” said Jimmy Phillips, 37, of Half Moon Bay, who attended the meeting in Santa Rosa. A commercial fisherman for 19 years, he was struck by the fact that sports fishermen, who get a longer season and are allowed to keep smaller fish, were allowed to catch more fish than the commercial anglers. “We just want to see some fairness. We as a whole feel like it really has not been fair.”
February 26, 2019 — The crew of the Bell M. Shimada hauled in the net, long as a football field and teeming with life. Scientists, off the coast of Washington for a week on this June research trip, crowded in for a look.
Each tow of the net revealed a changing world for chinook salmon, the Pacific Northwest’s most famous fish — and the most important prey for the southern-resident killer whales that frequent Puget Sound.
There were salmon the scientists expected, although fewer of them. But weirdly also pompano, tropical fish with pretty pink highlights, iridescent as a soap bubble, that were not supposed to be there at all.
What the scientists see each year on this survey underway since 1998 has taken on new importance as oceans warm in the era of climate change.
Decadelong cycles of more and less productive ocean conditions for salmon and other sea life are breaking down. The cycles of change are quicker. Novel conditions in the Pacific are the new normal.
“It used to be up, or down. Now, it is sideways,” said physiological ecologist Brian Beckman, of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center in Seattle.
That’s bad news for endangered orcas that rely on salmon for food. When salmon decline, orcas suffer.
Read the full story from The Seattle Times at Anchorage Daily News
February 15, 2019 — Only five California sea lions have been trapped at Willamette Falls and killed since the state received permission to launch the program to protect threatened winter steelhead and spring Chinook salmon.
The permit is for 93.
It was issued by the National Marine Fisheries Service after nonlethal methods, like relocating the mammals to the Oregon Coast, failed.
The sea lions simply swam back.
Euthanasia continues to be debated by advocacy groups and scientists alike, but the dire situation for the fish rarely is.
Last winter, a record-low 512 wild winter steelhead completed the journey past Willamette Falls, according to state counts. Less than 30 years ago, that number was more than 15,000.
January 28, 2019 — Monday morning 800,000 federal employees will return to work for the first time in 35 days after the longest government shutdown in history.
It all stems from the ongoing political dispute over a border wall.
On Friday a deal was struck to temporarily open the government for three weeks. Federal workers are uneasy about the future after already missing two paychecks.
For more than a month Anna Kagley has been ready to return to her job at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. She’s worked at the agency for three decades.
“I’m a little nervous after missing 30 plus days,” said Kagley.
The fishery biologist who lives in Everett works with Chinook salmon and is concerned the shutdown has harmed the agencies long term work.
“I’m concerned we’ll be missing the beginning of the pulse of the fish migrating for some of our monitoring projects,” said Kagley.
The mother of five and primary bread winner for her family says she still doesn’t know when she’s get her next paycheck.
December 27, 2018 — Windstorms on Dec. 14 caused the power outage at the Gig Harbor state-run hatchery. A backup generator that would have powered a pump that supplies water to the incubators failed, and 6.2 million chinook salmon fry destined for release in Deschutes, Minter Creek and White River died.
Now, up to 2.75 million excess chinook fry — which accounts for less than half of the fry that were lost — will be transferred to the Minter Creek Hatchery to replace those salmon, the Washington State Department of Fish and Wildlife said in a Monday news release.
“This won’t fully replace the salmon lost last week, but it will allow us to put a significant number of fish into these waters next year,” WDFW Director Kelly Susewind said in the release. “I want to thank our tribal co-managers and federal partners for helping to make this happen.”
The replacement fry came from six other hatcheries. The move was approved by NOAA Fisheries on Friday, and the fish are set to be released in May and June of 2019.
Before the power outage on Dec. 14, 507,000 salmon were set to be released in White River, intended to provide food for Southern Resident orcas. The remaining 5.7 million salmon fry were part of ongoing operations to support state fisheries.
“Losing those fish was a painful setback for state and tribal fishers, for the communities that depend on fishing, and for Southern Resident orcas that feed on chinook,” Susewind said.
December 19, 2018 — Millions of salmon fry were killed during last week’s power outages.
The fry were in incubators at the Minter Creek Hatchery in Gig Harbor. The pump that supplies water to the incubators lost power, and the backup generator failed. As many as 6.2 million chinook salmon fry died, according to a news release from the Washington State Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW).
“This is a devastating loss,” Eric Kinne, WDFW hatchery division manager, said in the release. “The department is conducting an analysis to determine the root cause of what went wrong so that we can improve procedures at Minter Creek and our other hatcheries to help ensure this doesn’t happen again.”
December 19, 2018 — Catching chinook salmon today requires gear, technique, experience and luck. Catching salmon a year or a decade from now requires science.
That means local science. The recent National Climate Assessment notes that Alaska’s temperature has been warming at twice the global rate. To get at what this means for Alaskans, we need University of Alaska scientists.
Alaskans are getting a better handle on what a warming world does to salmon runs through the work of a federally funded corps of local fisheries researchers based at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Known as the Alaska Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit, its researchers address climate questions from an Alaska perspective.
For example, they research how melting glaciers can increase or diminish salmon numbers and for how many years. They consider how the increasing frequency of wildfires plays out on salmon streams. They compare how the same conditions can have different effects on sockeye, coho and chinook salmon.
It’s not the gloom and doom of a planet in peril. In some ways, climate change appears to have boosted some salmon counts, at least temporarily.
An accurate salmon count depends in part on a good scientist count. Here, the news is not good. Until I hired Alaska assistant unit leader Abby Powell to come run the University of Florida Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit three years ago, the Alaska unit had five faculty members. It’s down to two.
Slowly starving for lack of federal funding, Alaska’s fish and wildlife species science is itself becoming an endangered species.
The national Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit (CRU) program was established in 1935 on the premise that science, not politics, should guide management of national treasures such as eagles, bison, and moose. An administration proposal to de-fund it does away with that premise.